Plan B
by aslycsi1315
Summary: Henrietta Lange should have had a plan A, B, and C on how to deal with Deeks' reaction to Kensi missing in Afghanistan. If she had, she wouldn't be sitting in the hallway of Director Vance's office, needing to explain how her police officer went rogue and tore up half of Afghanistan looking for her.
1. Chapter 1

Henrietta Lange should have had a plan A, B, and C on how to deal with Deeks' reaction to Kensi missing in Afghanistan. If she had, she wouldn't be sitting in in the hallway of Director Vance's office, needing to explain how her police officer went rouge and tore up half of Afghanistan.

In her defense, Hetty sort of had a plan and it was the standard plan when giving Deeks bad news- pull him to the side, give the news in a calm, comforting voice, allow him some time to digest the news and then watch him move into action where her agents and she could watch him. When she did pull him to the side after Granger called via satellite to announce Kensi's disappearance, Deeks went ballistic.

"Why the hell did you send her in the first place? Who is the White Ghost? I should have gone with her!"

And in return, Hetty calmly told him the truth, "She has a tie to a dangerous man. I believed she was the best choice and I stand by it. I know you want to go-"

"Don't….just don't…." Deeks muttered angrily and stormed out of the OPS. Sam and Callen gave her the usual _we-should-say something, but-Hetty-will- kill-us _looks to each other and decided to give him the much needed space. Hetty knows her cop very well- the beach is his go-to place for everything. So Hetty and the team worked diligently to set up a flight, a plan, and the best way to deal with Deeks when he returned.

He never did.

Ninety minutes later, the C-17 Bombardier is ready to take Callen, Sam and Nell to Afghanistan.

"Where's Deeks? He wouldn't take almost two hours with Kensi in danger," Nell asks as she's nearly buried under a tactical vest, her backpack filled with her electronics and the thick sunhat Eric is making her wear.

"Maybe he lost track of time. They have their thing and maybe he's lost it," Callen suggests.

"Not bloody likely," Sam snorts. "Something isn't right. Deeks is too strong to lose it during something like this."

"Then where is he?"

As Hetty listens to both men converse, she takes a step near the detective's desk. Sam has called Deeks five times with no answer and the detective's car is still in the parking lot. Unbeknownst to the team, Hetty has already made a call to the pair of eyes she has on Deeks' favorite beach and finds him to be missing.

He's done something and she knows it and it's confirmed when she pushes a random travel brochure from a pile on the desk and finds Deeks' wallet with his license missing and a bank withdrawal sheet for $800 dollars dated from six days after Kensi had left.

"Bugger," Hetty curses under her breath. The operations manager had always, _always, _prided herself on knowing her agents, but in the following hour, they find that from the moment Kensi had left, he had made his own contingency plan. Their backup weapons cache in the basement has been cleared out of a brand new Remington MSR rifle, a Kevlar vest, an AR 15 assault rifle, and two Sig P229s along with a Kevlar vest, tactical belt and a sat phone. Twenty five minutes later, an old friend of Callen who had been bonding with Deeks for the past few months calls to check in on the emergency Deeks had told him to get a ride on an emergency military flight that will get him to Afghanistan in half the time.

"Get on the plane and catch him before he gets himself killed!" Hetty barks at her two agents. If it wasn't for the high possibility of loss of life, she'd be incredibly impressed. She soon finds out that Deeks had been practicing assembling and using a sniper weapon on the weekends- hell, the cop could now move through Camp Pendleton's tactical course at the speed Kensi moved at during her early years as an agent.

"Marty, what have you done?" She gave him space, missed his personal training that would best be done under guidance, and now she's certain that her cop has walked into the lion's den alone. The feeling lingers during her team's ten hour flight to Afghanistan and begins to quickly dissipate when she's updated by Granger and the team every hour after they landed.

* * *

At the airport, the team is told that Agent Sabatino, a man free to come and go during the case, has just limped into camp and admitted that he and Kensi had been pinned down during a stakeout, she had been kidnapped, and Sabatino had ran for it. Sabatino isn't the least bit afraid to also admit that in his heat stroke induced daze he had walked back in; Deeks found him, broke his arm after finding out about ditching Kensi, and manipulated information about Kensi's last location.

"He was real…I swear he was there and he was pissed," Sabatino mutters when Callen, Sam, and Granger stand in front of him as he lays in the medical tent. "Did you send him to camp or something since last year? How long has he been an agent?"

"He's not," Granger growls.

"He moves like it- he's quick and traveled light. I could see it in his eyes- he's a man on a mission."

An hour later, the team makes it Kensi's last known location and finds two bodies of men thought to be tied to White Ghost. They know the blue eyed man had been there by the fern leaf tucked into one of the man's pockets. There's a piece of paper with GPS coordinates in the pocket as well. Back at the camp, Nell calls them to give the location of the GPS coordinates- a mile and a half walk north from their location as the temperatures are quickly dropping with evening approaching.

"I'll call it in," Granger volunteers.

"No, we should just go and have reinforcements come!" Callen exclaims. His heart is about to burst through the roof.

"We do this by the book. Deeks should have thought about this before going lone wolf," Granger replies. He calls the camp and his attempt becomes useless- shots have just been fired at a small village that match the coordinates. Reinforcements are already on the way with Sam, Callen, and Granger being the closest. So they run as fast they physically can and what they find is earth-shattering.

"Hetty?"

"Please get to it, Mr. Callen."

"Both Kensi and Deeks are safe."

"Excellent…..what's wrong?"

"You need to see it to believe it."

* * *

Now, as she sits in the hallway of the Director Vance's office, the pictures from the village are still fresh in her mind. Her police officer has successfully found a vantage point and easily sniped five patrols silently with his rifle. Two additional men had been taken down by a knife, Kensi's knife in particular. In a room, a chair with cut ropes sit in the middle room with Hendrick Cole, an enemy of Kensi's father, lying dead on the Arabic carpet. In ten minutes, he had taken down eight men.

Hetty slowly looks up to the detective sitting next to her. His eyes are just as cold as they were when Callen, Sam, and Granger had found him walking with Kensi out of the house she was held in. His injuries had been numerous- a bandage covers his cheek where a bullet had grazed him and his hand unconsciously covers the area where had been shot twice. The hollowness in him worries her more than anything else.

"Mr. Lange, Detective Deeks. The director will see you now," the secretary calls out.

Hetty breathes in deeply as Deeks rises. She isn't afraid of the consequences for his actions- she's sure he won't get more than a warning.

Henrietta Lange is afraid because of the darkness that's erupted in her gentle, happy cop to rescue his partner.

She's afraid of the hungry, greedy look in Granger's eyes when he realized that the goofy cop turned into the perfect super agent.

She's afraid of her young brunette agent being antsy or even afraid of Deeks' dark demeanor.

And most of all, she's afraid that Marty Deeks won't ever come back.


	2. Chapter 2

"_What's going on? Sam and Callen nearly ran me over near the armory." _

"_Ms. Blye disappeared from camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Deeks. She went on her own after she missed a shot to kill a man known as the White Ghost-" _

"_She's...she's missing...Why the hell did you send her in the first place? Who is the White Ghost? I should have gone with her!"_

"_She has tie to a dangerous man, I believed she was the best choice and I stand by it. I know you want to go-"_

Marty Deeks' trust in Hetty Lange is officially gone.

Two days ago; Hetty broke him, _tore him into pieces_, when she pulled him aside and told him that Kensi had gone missing in Afghanistan. 2:00 on a Friday afternoon, Hetty took him into her office and dropped the bomb. There are so many emotions racing through his blood in the second after she had justified her decision in the most apathetic tone. Fear for his partner's life, confusion over the case and what do the next and most dominantly- anger. Anger for Hetty not sending him with her from the start and anger for her treating him like everything was normal during his sleepless, nightmare filled nights and his mind buzzing over his backup plan for 97 days.

She sent his Kensi off into war and now he may lose her.

So for the best thing for everyone, he stomps out of the OPS center and blacks out everything until he's airborne on a C-5 Galaxy military plane.

He's sitting in one of the airplane seats, staring at the small $2 mirror that a Marine had attached above one of the seats. At some point, Deeks had changed into a military fatigue jacket, cargo pants, a black cap and a scarf and got on the flight he had set up in advance.

_I look so different_. Deeks runs his hand over his face and can feel the go-bag filled with the heavy arsenal he'll need to rescue his partner- a Remington Rifle, AR-15 assault rifle, two Sigs and other tactical items. He glances at the mirror again and now knows something for sure- Marty Deeks is still at the OPS center, panicking frantically over possibly losing his partner. At this moment, he's his darkest, deepest alibi that he may not be able to come back from- Max Gentry.

* * *

Afghanistan sucks just as much as he had expected it to be when the C-5 Galaxy lands at a military camp outside of Kandahar.

It's hot and sticky with high wind speeds blowing so much sand around that he has to cover his nose and mouth with his scarf while walking out the airplane. Although the hot weather makes him want to strip down to a tee shirt, the memory of countless stories from Sam and Callen in the Middle East reminds him that he'll be thankful as hell when the brutal cold that comes with nightfall arrives.

The first thing the detective does once off the plane is pull over a fresh faced solider and quiz him to get everything he can about the lay of the land, modes of travel and after showing a picture of Granger that he ripped off the back of the NCIS brochure he had found in storage at OPS and the picture Kensi had sent him two weeks ago, he finds out that he needs to get to Camp Delta-47, fifteen miles down the road. He catches a ride on the back of a transport truck easily with no one asking questions. Deeks as Max is confident and focused enough to pass as a Marine.

Once he's at the camp, Deeks starts walking down the lone path that leads into insurgent territory. He's quick about it and before he knows it, he's trudging through sand that seems to sink beneath his feet . The wind is brutal enough to get any man to want to turn around, but Deeks doesn't. The only thing that makes him stop to catch his breath is the sight of a man cowered by the only tree he's seen for miles.

"Help..." the man gasps. Deeks continues to approach him until the man's dark eyes trigger a response in the detective he can't control. He lunges forward and slams the man to the ground.

"Sabatino, what the hell are you doing out here?" Deeks roars. Sabatino, covered in bruises, dust, and blood, quickly realizes that the light hearted detective is long gone.

" Blye and I- we were- we went- why are you here? Where's Callen, Sam, and Granger?" Sabatino stammers. He tries to push Deeks' grip on his jacket away, but it only makes the detective angrier.

"I know Kensi is missing," Deeks reaches for the Sig from his waist and presses the nuzzle against Sabatino's chin. "Tell me that you weren't with her when she got captured. Tell me so I no longer have the urge to shoot you."

"Yes. We were attacked, she got separated and then I tried to get help." His heart beat is racing out of control at Deeks' homicidal demeanor, a fear he has every right to have. In seconds, Deeks takes Sabatino's right arm and slams it hard against the rock near his body. He then covers Sabatino's mouth and whispers, " Listen to me carefully, Sabatino. You are going to get up like a man and walk back to your camp. My team won't be far behind me and you're going to tell them everything that's happen.

"You aren't going to go after Blye by yourself, are you?" Sabatino whimpers.

Deeks stands up and looks down at the crumpled CIA agent. "Watch me."

* * *

"Detective Deeks?"

Deeks looks up from his hands to Director Leon Vance. Vance sits back in his desk chair with his slightly chewed pencil in his hand. Hetty, who had been by his side during the meeting isn't in the small chair next to him anymore. The clock behind Vance tells Deeks that he's been sitting in the office for an hour now.

"Sorry," Deeks croaks. "I didn't' hear-"

"Let's take a break," Vance says. "Did you catch any of what we just spoke about?"

Deeks nods his head and looks down to his hands once more. Like two days ago, he had blacked out most of the today and the meeting. "No, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't even realize Hetty had left the room."

Vance closes the file on his desk and sits up tall in his chair. "I kicked Hetty out because I know that you don't trust her. She sent your partner to kill a friend of her father's and you cleared out a village alone. You like as if you're struggling to stay awake, Deeks. Let's take a break and meet back in a few hours."

"I'm fired, aren't I?" Deeks mumbles. The moment he had walked out of OPS, he knew that his job would more than likely be gone.

"Fired? I'd say no. Further than that, I don't know," Vance states, " You're dangerous, Detective. Incredibly dangerous."


	3. Chapter 3

"Detective Deeks, you can go."

The blonde haired agent blinks and slowly releases the rest of the breath he's been holding in for the last minute or so. He slowly looks up to Vance, who has suddenly moved from behind the desk to leaning on the front edge of the desk. The Director taps his pen against the table top as he watches for the reaction of any kind that he's been expecting from Deeks.

"I don't know where to go," Deeks finally mumbles, his gaze almost immediately dropping back to the floor. It's the complete, honest truth- he's sure that Hetty is standing in the cramped waiting room with the assistant or on the walkway planning some way to make her look guilt-free. At this moment in time, Deeks doesn't want to be anywhere near her; getting on a flight begrudgingly with her to see the Director was way pass his already non- existence tolerance level of Hetty.

And then there's Kensi….

"Go for a walk. It's not Los Angeles weather outside, but it's decent outside considering that it's March," Vance says with a quick nod to the clear blue skies both men can see outside of the office window. "Look, I can only guess what's going through your head right now and the best advice I can give you is to go clear your mind for a few hours. You know what- let's make it 8:30 tomorrow morning. You look like you could use the rest. Alright?"

Deeks slowly rises from his chair and numbly nods in agreement. He turns and steps into the door frame where he can see Hetty speaking quietly with the assistant. He catches her eye for a moment and decides to keep walking, out of the room in the same dead trance that he traveled almost two miles in Afghanistan when he came across a sight that broke him into pieces.

* * *

**Afghanistan**

"You're just going to get yourself killed!"

Deeks stops in his tracks and turns against the hot, sticky blowing wind to face the crumpled form of Sabatino. The CIA agent cradles his right arm in his other and shoots antsy glances at the knife he had just dropped during Deeks slamming him to the ground. All it takes is a homicidal glare from Deeks to get Sabatino to push himself onto his feet with his uninjured arm and limp off towards the camp. If they were in any other situation, Deeks would laugh or even smirk.

But it isn't.

Deeks tightens the sling that holds up his AR-15 and begins following the staggered footsteps Sabatino had left behind earlier. His mind runs through the conversation near the ambulance the day Kensi had left as he trudges on.

"_We're going to figure this out. All we gotta do is talk about it."_

"_Ok, but you don't- you don't really like talking about it."_

"_Yeah, but I'll promise that I'll be better at talking about this."_

Deeks stops and shakes his head in disbelief. Whether he gets another chance to figure things out with Kensi or not, Marty Deeks will never ever forgive Hetty for taking the opportunity away from them.

"We can sell it!"

"No, we must burn it!"

Deeks stops in his tracks and crouches down on the incline that leads to two men arguing in Arabic. He can't make out the object that the taller of the two men is waving at the other. With his finger on the trigger of his assault rifle, Deeks crawls as quietly as he can up the incline until his eyes finally focus on the object in the man's hand.

His partner's bloody scarf.

The detective's reaction is a blur- he blinks and suddenly he's standing over the two now dead men with at least three gunshot wounds in each of them. Deeks' body and mind are so numb that he feels nothing when he brings two fingers his cheek to wipe the blood off of his cheek and realize that he's been shot. Somehow in the last few minutes, Deeks has just killed both men in pure, blinding anger over the simple thought that his partner is most likely dead. Any trace of his old self is officially gone over the sight of the bloody scarf.

So like the mission- focused, apathetic Max Gentry he's had to become, Deeks covers his wound with gauze bandages and wraps, plants the fern leaf good luck charm he had carried from home at the base of a nearby tree and starts following the footsteps once more with the once beautiful scarf in hand.

* * *

Back in present day Washington D.C, Hetty has just watched her detective walk out of Vance's office with the most unreadable face she's ever seen on him. It's impossible to determine if he's just been fired, hired, reminding her how angry he is again without words or if he is mentally back in Afghanistan. It's only been two days since she's last seen Deeks in his usual light hearted mood and she misses it dearly.

"Lange!"

Hetty blinks in response at Vance's call of her name from his office doorway. He beckons her with a finger and growls, " We need to talk."

"Of course, Leon," Hetty answers respectfully. She walks into his office quickly, closes the office door and turns around to see Vance shaking his head at her in what some would consider disgust.

"Did you fire him?" Hetty asks as she takes a seat in the chair she had sat in earlier.

"I haven't figured out what to do with him yet. He looks like hell so I sent him out for a break for a few hours. Before I ask what the hell goes on in that head of yours," Vance states, "How's Agent Blye?"

"She's angry and hurt-"

"Considering that you sent her off to kill someone who was an enemy and even an old friend of her father , she has every right to be."

"She will most likely request to transfer out of my unit."

Vance snorts without the faintest hint of empathy for Hetty. "Also, not surprising. If I pull Detective Deeks into NCIS, you won't get him back either."

"I understand."

"Hhmmm." Vance turns in his chair to face the stunningly calm view outside of the window. He starts to tap his pencil against his thigh repetitively. "How do you do it, Henrietta? How do you make this decisions that screw with lives with no remorse?"

"If I had no remorse or feeling for my decisions," Hetty states irritably as she rises from the chair, "I wouldn't be here."


	4. Chapter 4

Injured and out in a city he's never been in before, Deeks finds himself wandering to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

He hobbles to the grassy area that surrounds the pool and lowers himself onto the cool, slightly damp grass. A year ago, he had told Kensi in the middle of exploring a suspect's home that the Reflecting Pool was on his list of places he planned on taking her. Now that he's here and his partner is somewhere at the NCIS building, the beautiful sight does not seem as stunning and fun as he thought it would be.

"Cold," Deeks mumbles under his breath after a cold breeze makes him shiver. Like the Director had said, the weather is nowhere near the warm, sunny Los Angeles they had left behind the night before. He wraps his arms around his body even with the resonating pain in his shoulder and wrists. Below him, the sun makes the water glisten and as much as Deeks has the faint desire to walk down near the water, he can't sand the idea of looking at his own reflection.

It isn't the scars and the bandages that scare him; it's whatever the hell that Kensi saw in him that has her seeming afraid of him.

* * *

**Afghanistan**

When Sabatino' footsteps end in the sand, Deeks stands at the top of a hill that overlooks a village.

The small village is surrounded by an ankle high stone wall with a stone entrance on the opposite end of town from where the detective stands. There are four one story stone buildings with walkways on top of each of them. In the center of the village stands a modern two story townhouse, fitted with a machine gun on the roof and metal bars on the glass window. Deeks decides it best to scope out the village by using the scope on the Remington tear down rifle in his backpack. The idea sounds simple to him until he puts the rifle together and tries to lay down on the ground.

"Gwaa…." Deeks hisses in pain at the pain of his gunshot wound against the hard, sandy ground. His wound had been completely numb until now and it makes him hope for another trigger that will make the pain numb and him closer to finding his possibly dead partner. Every breath hurts so bad- it's a miracle he stays conscious as he places his eye against the scope and finds himself looking at the roof of the closest building where a muscular, Arabic man holds an assault rifle in hands.

Deeks spots four other men on patrol that are spread out among the other three buildings. Still with no sign of Kensi, the detective is about to give up- _maybe they dropped Sabatino off here which explains the end of the tracks. I should probably check for a tire tread….if I can get up, _Deeks thinks as his small dots appear in his vision. He shakes his head to get out of the daze and decides to look through the bottom window of the townhouse.

That's when he sees a tall, muscular African American man with an electrical cord in hand in front of a bloodied, barely conscious Kensi.

And just like when he saw the bloody scarf, Deeks with the anger and fight of Max Gentry loses control.

In what seems like a blink of an eye, Deeks fires two rounds into two of the patrols with such an accuracy that it would make Callen and Kensi proud. He takes down the third and the fourth man quickly with shots to the chest and the neck. He's completely numb when he kills the last patrol, stands up and begins to jog down the hill with his AR-15 dangling from his sling. As he gets closer to the wall, he can hear a man yelling and it's a sign that a body has been found and it's time for a hell of a fight.

Deeks sprints through the entrance and fires shots at two men emerging from the townhouse. Both men are quick and dodge out of the detective's shots and duck into an alley. Deeks slows his pace and aims his gun at the entrance of the dark alley. When he's in front of the alley, he stops suddenly when it's completely empty. Nothing moves, including himself, until the sound of Kensi's screams catches his attention and leaves him vulnerable. One of the men fires a bullet and it hits Deeks in the side.

"NCIS!" Deeks yells without reason as he shoots the farther man in the leg and then pulls out Kensi's knife to whip it towards the closer man. The knife nicks the man in the neck and he dies before he hits the ground. A man with nothing to lose, Deeks runs towards the man scrambling for his gun. In one swift move, Deeks grabs the knife from the ground and stabs the man in the chest. He doesn't wait to see if the man is dead before he sprints into the townhouse doorway with his last weapon, his Sig P229.

"Put it down!" The African American man now has Kensi in a headlock and a gun against her temple. She can barely stand on her visible broken leg as she yells, "Cole, let him go. You have me! Do whatever you need to do to me."

"Put it down or she dies, you little punk! Put it down and call up the rest of your little-"

Without a thought of the possibility of hitting Kensi in a cross fire, Deeks fires one shot at Cole's head, killing him instantly.

Kensi falls onto the chair she had been tied to earlier and gasps for air. When she looks up at her partner, she's isn't sure who is staring back at her.

* * *

**Washington D.C**

"Isn't this one of the places on your _take Kensi she doesn't want to go _list?"

Deeks flinches when he is drawn out of the memory by the sound of his partner's voice. He's scared to look up and into those same scared brown eyes he saw in Afghanistan. Instead, Deeks listens to Kensi lower herself from her crutches and onto the ground with a soft, " Oooof."

"I thought you were still at the hotel," Deeks mumbles as he anxiously begins to rub his hands together.

" I couldn't stay there with you talking with the Director alone…and I was getting really bored," Kensi replies. She brushes her hair behind her ear where a bandage is visible. Her injuries, besides the broken leg, were a few electrical burns and bruises from a beating. "What he say?"

"He told me to take a break for the rest of the day."

Kensi inhales and then leans forward. "Deeks, look at me."

"I can't," Deeks says, hating the tears forming in his eyes. He's been a ticking bomb of guilt and fear for two days now and it's finally begun to spill out. " You're afraid of me."

"What?" Kensi tries to turn her body the best she can towards Deeks and ends up groaning in frustration when her cast prevents her from completely facing her partner. " What makes you think that?"

"I saw it in your eyes in Afghanistan and I can see it now. I'm so sorry, Kens-"

"For saving me?" the brunette agent exclaims incredulously, " You actually regret saving me?"

"No-" Deeks' eyes slowly travel to hers, " I regret that I wasn't good enough to save you as myself. I had to become a monster to save you."

"That's not what scares me, Deeks. What scares me is that that man who used to care about my dad kidnapping me and reducing me to a sniveling, weak mess that tortured me into thinking that my father wasn't a good man." Like her partner had earlier, Kensi looks down to her uninjured leg bent next to her cast. " I'm afraid of how his actions turned you into some kind of Robocop. What I'm saying…is that when I saw you, I became afraid of how lost you and I are and the possibility of us not getting back to being Kensi and Deeks, a boy and a girl hanging out in a pick-up truck getting ice cream."

Deeks stares at her as he takes in her words. He has the same fears as she does and the reality of not being alone in those fears gives him a sliver of hope and stability, a sliver so small that he'll do anything to hold onto it. So he does something that he didn't think he'd have the strength to do- Deeks doesn't kiss her, but pulls Kensi back on the grass with him. Kensi doesn't flinch or panic, but smiles as they stare into each other's eyes.

Right now in this moment, Marty Deeks and Kensi Marie Blye will just be a boy and a girl, both emotionally scarred, holding onto that sliver of hope and stability that may lead them back to the old days.


	5. Chapter 5

Back in Los Angeles, Sam stands in front of the wall screen in the operations room, staring at the crime scene photos from Afghanistan for the umpteenth time.

_Two minutes- seven shots. _

_Only the best can come and pick off shots quick and efficiently like this…..so how did Deeks do it?_

He hates to admit it, but he actually doubts Deeks' sniper rifle skills. Callen and Kensi had always taken sniper duties and the detective has never shown a real interest in training on the weapon. Now as the ma runs through his mind for a memory of Deeks talking about anything involving a sniper rifle at his days at LAPD, he comes up empty.

_Could he really have practiced and gotten that good since Kensi left?_

_The MSR is a complex weapon to teach yourself- could he really have done it?_

Sam steps out of his thoughts and listens to silence that echoes throughout the building. Down stairs, analysts are quietly working at their desks around the empty bullpen that would have been filled by the team. Sam had kicked out all of the analysts from the operations room so that he could study the photos, Callen was fuming at Hetty and cleaning his weapons in the armory and Nell and Eric were pulling every ounce of information on Hendrik Cole for the after action reports. With the team on stand down during the meeting with the Director in D.C, it is the perfect time to analyze the detective's actions and what could have possibly gone through Hetty's mind when deciding to send Kensi to Afghanistan.

Sam drums his finger against the table and closes his eyes. He drifts back to when he, Granger, and Callen had sprinted through the cold desert air and found Deeks carrying Kensi out of the walkway of the small village.

* * *

**Afghanistan**

"There they are!"

Callen leads the group of Sam and Granger as they quickly make their way down the hill towards the walkway and is the first to point out Deeks and Kensi. He holds out his assault rifle in hand and scans the empty streets as he runs. He slows to a walk when he's feet away from the partners and calls out, "Are you safe? Is the town clear?"

"Put me down," Kensi tells Deeks. The detective doesn't move and Kensi has to repeat, "Put me down, Deeks!" She's lowered slowly onto the ground where she slides her injured leg in front of her and finally answers, "I'm ok, Callen."

Sam, who had been calm and collect the entire mission, suddenly snaps. He marches over to Deeks and gives him a hard push on the shoulder, roaring, "What the hell is the matter with you, Deeks? You could have gotten yourself killed!"

"Agent Hanna, leave him," Granger orders. He steps in between the man and turns to Sam. "Let's get Agent Blye on a helicopter, check for any bodies-"

"Bodies?" Kensi's head shoots up and she asks, "Weren't you with Deeks….when-when he killed the patrol?"

"We just got here," Sam says, his expression softening slightly. He moves to the right of Granger and calls out, "What patrol?"

When Deeks doesn't respond, Kensi steps in. She glances between Granger, Sam, and Callen, saying, "Um….there was a patrol with ten men when Hendrik Cole brought me here. So who took out the patrol?"

"Deeks?" Sam calls out. Deeks does not look up from his gaze that's locked on a spot on the ground and begins to tremble. He's crashing out of the tough, cold-hearted world of Max Gentry and back into being the emotionally- crumbling form of Marty Deeks.

"Deeks?" Sam repeats. He takes another step closer to Deeks and stops a foot away. "Did you take out the patrol by yourself?"

"Kensi has a broken leg, a few cuts and bruises and needs to get medical attention," Deeks suddenly bursts out in a monotonous, barely understandable voice, " Ten including Kensi's kidnapper were all taken down. I did everything accordingly and efficiently to rescue Kensi-"

"Deeks?" Sam puts a hand on Deeks' shoulder and watches as the detective slowly bring his gaze up to Sam's where the dark circles around his eyes and fear flash back at him. "Did you clear the village by yourself?"

Deeks slowly lifts a finger over to where Kensi sits and mumbles, "We need to call the helicopter and get Kens…get Kens to um-get Kensi some medical health."

"But-"Sam freezes when he sees the sight that has caught Granger, Kensi, and Callen's attention. Blood has soaked the hem of his shirt and the entire left leg of his dark cargo pants. Sam pulls up Deeks' shirt and gasps at the two bullet holes in Deeks' stomach. He looks back up to Deeks and takes the detective's face in his hands. "It's ok. Forget about the patrol and focus on me."

"Sam, the pain is coming back. Kensi's ok, right?"

Sam swallows hard and can see Deeks slipping out of consciousness. "Kensi's ok."

For Deeks, nothing else matters. He can hear Kensi's calls for him, Granger on the satellite phone and the faint sound of Callen and Sam's arguments over how to help him. "I'm a monster, Sam," he mutters before passing out into Sam's arms, "I'm a monster."

* * *

"Where's everyone?"

Sam continues to stare at the screen and doesn't hear the voice of Granger from the doorway. Granger smirks at the pondering SEAL and walks up to his side. He pauses for a minute and calls out, "Agent Hanna."

Sam jerks out of his thoughts and sits up straight at the sight of Granger. The assistant director sneaks a glance over to the crime scene photo on the screen and asks, "Where is the rest of your team?"

"Scattered throughout the building. You put us on stand-down, remember?" Sam says annoyedly. Even after being home for a few days, Sam still can't tell what Granger's end game is. On the flight home, Sam could see a new found curiosity in Granger's eye while staring at Deeks, a greedy curiosity that has Sam and Callen on the defense for the detective. Hetty's greediness or whatever fueled her to send Kensi almost got Kensi killed and turn Deeks into Max Gentry.

"So this is how you decide to spend your down time? Analyzing and reanalyzing what happened in Afghanistan?"

Sam shakes his head and points at the picture. "I'm not going to forget about it or take it as it is. I know Deeks and I want to know how he pulled this off and how-"

"You missed how talented he is."

Sam places his head in his hands and repeats, "I missed how talented he is…..I missed how freaking talented he is and it could have gotten him killed."

"Well, I have an opportunity for you to be able to work with Deeks again and not make the same mistake," Granger states. "If Deeks is brought to NCIS and I don't take him-"

"Take him?!" See I knew it-"Sam exclaims, "You want to use Deeks-"

"What I will do with Deeks if I decide to take him is up to me, Agent Hanna. However, if I don't take him, you have the opportunity to take him under your wing. I am considering putting you as the lead for this office. Do you want it?"


End file.
